The Bear and Barnacle

Holmes had been brooding, as he was wont to do after the holidays. He decided a change of scene would do him good and since he had a built-in occasion, why not make the most of it? So he phoned the Ritz in London for reservations and rented a Bentley for the drive. A little sight-seeing after luncheon would be interesting. No doubt the city had changed a good deal since he had last seen it. Odd how he hadn’t been out of Margate proper since he’d unexpectedly found himself here. So, promptly at 10.30 in the morning, the Bentley purred up to the curb outside Holmes’ house. Taking up his hat and stick, Holmes descended the steps and entered the elegant car. His driver (in quite proper chauffeur attire) shut the door and got in himself. They left the curb almost noiselessly, and Holmes sat back, enjoying the smell of the car's leather interior. This was a bit of an extravagant folly to be sure, but one doesn’t turn 156 every day. Five minutes later, the Bentley pulled up outside the pub and the horn blatted discreetly.

Gaav stares at his sister with his arms folded over his chest and radiates Not Amused. Dolphin moves a pawn in a direction that pawns are not generally allowed to move, she seems to be playing both sides, or possibly more as there seem to be three queens and four colors. "Well?" he says flatly.

Dolphin looks up and does a pretty good impression of an excited little girl seeing her favorite uncle, though the bouncing this results in inside her top is less little-girlish and pushes the chessboard carelessly aside so the pieces topple. "Brother! You look different. Did you cut your hair?"

( Read more... )

It's a very pretty day; fluffy clouds and birdies chirping death threats at each other and woodland animals scampering about and all that. Unfortunately, Xel has just gotten back from the physical therapist (having sworn up and down to allow no needles whatsoever), and is therefore in no mood to appreciate it.

Oh, her slack-jawed complete failure to even understand the shape of the muscles around his leg was entertaining. He didn't try to explain; telling someone that your leg was broken when you were three and magically healed by someone too green to understand that it needed to be set properly first, that your medium-soft tissues had grown into place around a knobbled, shelf-like structure of bone-scarring as a result, and that you'd just re-broken it and whittled away said structure without leaving a scar and the muscles were now going to have to adjust to a tibia that is suddenly the correct shape--well, it would just take too much explaining. And there would be follow-up questions. So he'd just smiled at her and said Ahahaha, well, it's complicated, but this is how things are, you can see the problem, ne?

So, yes, the reaction had been amusing, but the following hour. Just. Well. The break had been painful, a delicious tide of crimson, but...

The thing is, Xel wasn't born a masochist, but Zelas-sama knew how to remedy that before he'd been mazoku even a few years, and now he has both the mazoku and the normal human reactions to pain. And that hour. And. And. He'd decided to keep trying to take evening shifts at the pub. Meaning spending hours in public and putting on at least two shows at once before getting any alone time with his person. Or chickening out, which is no shame for a Guildsman but would mean spending the entire day completely alone. Which might be even worse.

So the mood he was in, carving banister posts someone had ordered into giraffe heads to focus himself before heading over to the B&B, when the doorbell rang, was really a little bit indescribable. Especially since the birch-wood is warded to keep the uninvited out. Taking all that into consideration, it's probably understandable that he somehow failed to put the carving knife down.

When he comes into the pub again for the first time in (Lady Bright, it must be) months, his smile is not a sociable one, but the serene little closed-eyed Metallium smile that isn't worried about how to fulfill any unexpected orders to kill (or worse, incapacitate) any given person. The pink glasses are not in evidence (they're in a pocket), and neither is the frilly apron with the chickie on it.

There's a minor ruffle in the kitchen when one of the new staff demands to know who he is and where the Dragon-Lady's gone. Only a few moments of being silently and blandly smiled at sees the man re-assigning himself to dishwashing duty, though, and Xellos spends the rest of the evening on the hibachi displays of knifework and blending across from the bar that the pub hasn't seen in a good, long time, during weeks of sandwiches and pastries and pub food, his face in a pleasant mask. He shouldn't be angry with Ivonka-san for letting the place forget what it ought to be, but by the third time one of the waiters asks him what today's specials are, the third time he says (snarls, by this point, however frozen in polite tones), whatever they ask for, he is.

Every so often, he pulls Iago away from the bar, click-clicking away on his new cast into secluded corners, and just folds himself into his arms, breathing him in with their fingers laced until he's steady enough to face all the eyes again, sliding his fingertips for reassurance into the pocket of Iago's apron, just big enough to snugly contain one little hiding cat, just in case. To keep from doing that every five minutes or so, he spends a lot of time with his weight all on his newly re-broken leg, occasionally bouncing gently on it. Sometimes he turns the night before, the night of breaking it, over meditatively in his mind as his hands fly (and, if the truth be known, his ethereal tendrils, because two hands alone, however fast, really can't whip together multiple dishes at once), and sometimes he just laps gently at the sweet, sustaining pain of it.

He walks into this town as he's walked into a thousand thousand towns, cities, kingdoms and battlefields at a measured saunter, long strides eating up the ground below him. There's a broadsword the size of a sapling resting casually on the shoulder of a yellow trench coat that glares like a caution sign with grudge. He surveys the misty evening, the rows of houses with televisions flickering through windows and the now empty beach. He doesn't look impressed.

He keeps walking, the strolling sightseers parting before him like pedestrians ducking an ugly exchange of words on a sidewalk.

Nearly nine feet tall with a flame-red ponytail to his knees and a face like a jagged cliff, he should be stopping traffic. But only a few people glance at him more than once. People know him, not consciously, but for those who fight or soldier, he's a familiar presence. Even though he's just walked into Margate, he was already there. Chaos Dragon Gaav is everywhere. All that changes is if he lets you know it or not.

As he walks in even strides, he tastes the astral flavors of the city: the revolting joy of families on vacation, the more satisfying bitterness of the regular inhabitants who's town has been invaded, a pleasant rolling anger from a fighting couple. These tastes grow stronger as he makes his way through the town, mixing with resentment, hunger, drunkeness and friendship. It's the oddity of many species in one place that draws him toward the pub. Not to mention a few astral signatures that are familiar.

Although he hits every bench in town (inside and out, and not a single one outside the borders), he doesn't hit every chair. That's a more random spattering. None belonging to anyone he's ever called family; don't draw attention there, and besides, eurgh. So there's just, here and there (and there, and there, and there) a chair that, when sat on, begins to silently rumble and purr pleasantly against its occupant. The shadowing spell will eventually wear off the little stones worked into their legs, but not, he thinks, for a good, long time. Not if the little snatches of astral body (mere grains, replenished every meal, less than is burned off with laughter) they take from their occupants in payment and to fuel their movement keep being renewed with sitting.

So: the innocent pleasure dispersed, the cleansing, pleasing deaths to follow, those without even a trace of his astral scent. This should give the little hell-brat a headache at the very least, drive him to distraction, in the best case, and out. Gadfly was always his role; he can't really hurt the prince of hell, but he can, maybe, annoy him enough to leave him alone.

It's dark when he finishes. He's heard about some winter deity-saint who touches every house in the world (of one faith, anyway) in a night, and spares a moment for admiration. But it's interrupted when he sees a certain store still open. Some temptations aren't worth resisting. With a candle in his pocket, smelling of autumn and spice, and two seals in the form of a fox and a smiley-face, he wends home. After all, he hasn't hit home either, knowing how well that would be received, and that's just not fair.

He expects this will end any time soon. He expects it might as well... go on forever. Nothing in this place is right, and life has been restored to him, so why not youth, too? Because nothing lasts, you idiot. And while he likes his new un-heavyness, the gangly limbs and boundless energy, his elder self already sneers at him for taking such puppyish delight in things that will - will - pass again. How fleeting is youth. Take joy in today, for tomorrow remains... uncertain. Lorenzo de' Medici knew all about that, didn't he. Old before his time, and bent twice as fast.

Nervously, Cesare looks up, cradling the juice-and-something Dora sneaked between his hands. "My mother was a very enterprising woman," he says, half-proud, half-shy. "I hear you can still visit some of the places she owned in Rome. Not all of them, no. But a few. The Vacca - that was a tavern - at the corner of Campo de' Fiori; it's a bakery now. And on the other side of the market, there's the Albergo del Sole. That was hers, too. The walls were all wonky!" he laughs, and elder Cesare chokes with apoplexy that he's using such a stupid word. "Not a single beam at straight edges. That's because they built it into the ruins of Pompei's Theatre. Where Caesar was killed. Not me. I mean, Giulio Cesare. The Imperator. My mamma had an inn there. Funny, no? And she owned other places, too."

Then he falls silent for a moment, rubbing his hands before he has to sit on them to keep them still. The juice is quite. Strong, like. His elder self nearly dies of shame at his caterwauling thoughts - when I was your age I already had my doctorate, he tells himself, and blushes. "Anyway. After my youngest brother Jofré was born, our father took a new mistress, but he made sure mamma was well-appointed and lacked for nothing. He found her a husband of good repute and and. Then I had to move away from her, from her house on piazza Pizzo di Merlo, and live with Aunt Adriana. That wasn't... nice. So I guess I was happy when they sent me to school in Perugia."

"They say she - mamma, I mean - they say Vanozza de' Cattanei survived most of her children." He swallows, blinks, then quickly, hastily empties the glass.

He didn’t like this joke. This game was not fun.

On first glance, you would look right over the boy. Just a child, nothing of consequence.
The boy, gangly and awkward as most 11 year olds, sat cross-legged on the sidewalk. On closer inspection one would see the very un-childlike look in his eyes, or the mix of small burns and shallow cuts lining his arms beneath the oversized t-shirt he wore. As if possibly he was not convinced he was real and kept testing the theory. Occasionally he would lift his head to watch the passerby in the street, strands of green dangling over his eyes, before his eyes returned to the ground and his hands to the box of matches he was currently lighting one by one. A pile of ash, burnt items, and spent matches lay in front of him. Every few moments, one small hand would reach up to touch the sides of his face, and the scars there, as if to assure him of their continued presence.

He was small, but anyone assuming he was also helpless would be startled to find themselves spilt from navel to nose in a matter of seconds.

Dora has gotten bored with the olives. No one seems to be ordering drinks that will give her the opportunity to spear them with the little plastic swords she talked Iago into getting. So for a while she tried slipping them into Iago's pockets but he caught her and sent her off to to make bugs out of the olives... He even joined her between customers to make her a caterpillar out of some toothpicks and olives. That lasted until The Minister swooped by and grabbed it, and proceeded to eat the caterpillar's olivey head.

So she drags out her box of markers and paper from behind the bar and decides it's time to draw something for Xellos. Her brow furrows as she tries to figure out what to draw him, but she can't decide on anything so she asks Iago for help. She likes his advice so she plops down at her table in the corner and draws.

When she's done, she adds a note then rolls them up and slips an elastic around the tube to hold it tight. She pulls an olive out of her pocket and throws it across the table at the back of the parrot who is still pulling olives from toothpicks. "Oi. There's post!"

The bird squawks indignantly at being pelted with food but he still obligingly turns around to stare at her while she waves the rolled up paper at him. He squawks again, "Rrrraack don't hit me, Iago!"

She giggles. "'m not Iago. And I'm not going to hit you."

He eyes her. "Traitor in the ranks!"

"I am not! You and Iago can keep fighting all on your own. I don't like wars." When the parrot says nothing, she pushes the rolled up drawing at him. "You have to take this to Xellos! And don't get it wet!"

The Minster reaches out to take it with one of his feet before taking flight. As he goes over Dora, he drops an olive onto her head. "OI!!!"

( Iago said to draw you some place warm! )

Dora doesn't really need long to decide what she wanted to give Mr Holmes. He was always asking her questions and investigating... everything. Or so it seemed to Dora. And The Minister agreed with her; he had a very good sense about these things, given that he was a parrot.

So she trudged off to find Professor McGonagall and ask if her idea was allowed- she had no desire to be in trouble with her. Professor McGonagall knew everything and everyone. And for a few moments Dora wondered if Mr Holmes had investigated her but couldn't decide if he must have or if she would have refused such an invasion. The internal debate came to a draw as both seemed equally likely and The Minister wasn't helping. He only squawked "Birds of a Feather" and something rather rude about cats before flying off again.

Professor McGonagall had agreed that it couldn't hurt and she would owl Dora's order for her. She had even taken the paper money that Dora brought with her for the purchase (money that Dora had earned from charging tourists 2 pounds a piece for having their picture taken with The Minister).

And now she had the two packages, wrapped up in alarmingly cheery paper with pink striped giraffes and green spotted zebras on it. She found Mr Holmes at the pub and scurried over to him.

"Here! I got your name in the gift exchange! I would have had The Minister bring them to you, but Xellos doesn't like him being in the pub and I'm already in trouble for bein' cleverer that Iago e'en though Iago's proud of me- sort of.. mostly! He says I'm sposed to be smart e'en though it was naughty to try to trick him- though I didn't. I just got my ear pierced, and he and Xellos agreed I could pierce one ear once- they just didn't say it had to be my earlobe and I got it up here!"

She points to the top curve of her ear where there is indeed a piercing through it, complete with a sparkling stud that changes between black and purple in the light. "But that's not your gift. These are your gifts!"

Dora hands over the wrapped books to him, one copy of Hogwarts: A History and one of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

The Joker is idly swirling his mug of coffee in his hands, tilting his chair against the wall of the pub. He chews on one cheek, then the other, and his tongue plays along his lips.

"Do you know", he says out loud to no one in particular, "Do you know what REALLY gets my goat? Yanks my chain? PISSES me off??"

He puts the coffee down and leans forward. "I.Can't.Stand.People.Finishing.My.Jokes. My jokes. Mine. And then they go and steal the punchline. It's...it's RUDE and INNAPROPRIATE."

He picks up his coffee again, and mumbles as he takes a sip. "I mean, really. Learn a little mannners."

It's not a pretty sight.

The Joker is happily humming a tune, bustling around the pub's kitchen in a frilly, lacy, white apron which is already covered in varios food-stuffs. He pauses and looks over to the corner, where Ivonka is bound and gagged. "How are we doing over there?" he asks, only getting a glare in response. "Well, if you hadn't been so, ah, difficult...you wouldn't be in this little, uh, situation." He taps her head with the wooden spoon he's holding. "I don't CARE if this is Merry Old England, I don't care if it's the beginnings of the Second Flood outside, I WANT MY THANKSGIVING."

Even if it means he's cooking it himself. He played with the turkey (it joined him in a waltz) more than he seasoned it, and it was very possibly going to be very under cooked or very overcooked by the time he was done with it. The stuffing had 3 kinds of bread products and any random food he could find to chop up and add. The potatoes, that was easy. If there was one thing he could do, it was SMASH, er, mash, potatoes. He loved them. Too many servings of Arkham's nasty instant-from-a-box-those-flakes-were-never-REAL-potatoes meant that he made sure to figure out how to make the real thing.

So the sides are about ready, the turkey is (hopefully) cooking, and now he's faced with the TRUE challenge. Pie. Because you can't have Thanksgiving without PIE. The prep table is covered in flour, and bowls of what may or may not be pie fillings. The Joker resumes stirring vigoursly at the bowl of, what he hopes, what will make the pie crust dough.

He pauses again, frowns at the mix, and holds out the bowl towards his captive. "Does this look right to you?" When all he gets is what sounds like muffled cursing, he sighs and rolls his eyes. "Now, now, that's not very helpful..." He licks his lips before shaking his head at her and leaning down close to her face. "You KNOW I can't eat all this by myself, so you might want to be more proactive with the advice, unless you WANT to be the reason I poison everyone."

He grins widely, and reaches to untie her gag. "But I warn you, you try anything, YOU'LL be the one being carved on the table."


Happy Turkey Day to all my American friends!

He stands there, getting wet and wetter, but instead of hurrying inside - fixing himself a caffè, now that he's learnt how to, instead of grabbing one of those lush towels, or better yet: lounging away the rest of the day, snug in a fauteuil, swirling Armagnac - he walks away from the door, back into the rain.

He doesn't look where he's going until he bumps into a bench, shin first. Cesare takes that for a sign - isn't the sky full of portents? - and sits, getting wet and wetter, the glasses clutched in his hand as if they were a saint's relic.

Looking heavenwards, all he sees are fleeing shapes, panicked and wheeling, twisted by an invisible force and trampled by the throng. The shapes in the clouds remind him of something. Something he's seen, somewhere. He vaguely remembers being angry ( then. )

Xellos stands at the window, staring into the punishing grey skies, beating the pavement down and whipping the earth into submission, the drumroll of water elbowing other thoughts from his mind.

As though in a dream, he walks upstairs to the bedroom, takes off his boots, twitches back the curtains, and steps out into the nook below the roof. Instantly drenched, he turns his face up, hair plastered to his face and nearly black with water. Opening his mouth to drink down the heavens, he breathes in great gulps of fizzling, tangy ozone, guzzling down the air until he's lightheaded and it hums in his blood.

He climbs up onto the railing. Stands there a minute, arms spread wide. Then, in a whirling, gold-speckled explosion of purple-grey, he jumps.

When life gives you thunder, make love to the sky.

"I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve..."

It was a line he'd used many times. He was always being called a monster - by the news, by the Bat, by the so-called "doctors" at Arkham. But he's not a monster. He just gets it, how the world really works, and he goes with the flow...wherever that flow takes him and whatever it inspires him to do.

Monster. What did that even MEAN? Looks that aren't the norm? How many people did not look "normal"? Behavior that is different? By some of their definitions, THEY were all monsters. The Batman himself even. The schemers, the planners, the politicians. The ones who manipulate the general populace, the ones who say "I'm doing this for you, the people. I'm going to SAVE you and CURE your world!", while really furthering only themselves and assisting the world on it's never-ending spiral towards inevitable self-destruction.

Monster. It's all relative.

AND.HE.IS.NOT.A.MONSTER.

Val is very pleased with his pumpkin effort. Even though it didn't actually work to bite the design into the rind, it has a very nice effect now that Jack cautiously let him have a knife.



At first he sort of wished the fire were a different color, but since it's occurred to him that the pumpkin will perhaps catch alight, and will certainly eventually rot and shrivel, maybe that shade's all right after all. ^,^

The walls are decked in harvest leaves, mellow-bright gourds on the tables, nuts and dried fruits scattered in glass bowls. One table is loaded with mead, cider, wines, and sake, fruit and loam-tinged, another cozily cluttered with cups, dry tea and strainers, and an enormous, bubbling carafe of water. He steps out for a moment, leaving the others setting out plates of frosted gingerbread and pfeffernuesse, glowing-ripe fruit and cheese, pulling tables into a loose circle.

The largest tree in the area is an oak, and at this moment, a glorious vibrance. No Flagon tree-forest, spreading forever and smelling of holiness and spiced sap, but it will do. What he hangs on it, a cluster of dark berries and bright red on a small wreath of supple birch branches wrapped, for the first time, with coppery-bronze ribbons along with the gold, has no precise meaning, wasn't crafted for the look, and his prayer, as he secures it on a branch and rests his hand on it, is no paean or plea.

He opens his heart to the year, and to the gold.

And then, at an easy pace, he moves back to the restaurant, and hangs the sign up on the door.

POETRY EXCHANGE
Tell your favorite
Ad-lib your own
Play off each other
Be absurd
No holds barred

The Joker sat on the ground outside the pub, looking angry and frustrated. Several of his knives lay on a pile of orange goo & seeds. Despite his propensity for knives, and his normal skill with them, this damn Halloween Pumpkin thing seemed to be beyond him. He had hacked diligently at it for a while, cleaning out the guts (though not very well), attempting eyes, then a nose, then a smile. It had been the smile where he might have gotten carried away. He ended up slicing the pumpkin almost in half. Tried to fix it, made it worse. And then came the throwing.

Holmes sits in his no-longer-spotless kitchen. "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms."

Rincewind found them floating in a tidal pool. He’d been walking along the beach and spotted several orange things just bobbing in the shallow water. Upon further investigation, they’d turned out to be pumpkins, which as far as Rincewind knew were not normally sea-dwelling vegetables. (Unless they’re fruits). A slender white stick bobbed there as well. He’d picked it up, not really thinking, and stuck it in his hat. He’d also picked up the largest of the pumpkins and taken it back to the pub. Not knowing precisely why he was doing this, Rincewind snuck into the kitchen and helped himself to several sizes of knife. He spent a good fifteen minutes pacing back and forth in front of the table. “AH!” Struck by inspiration (it does happen!) he went at the pumpkin busily for an hour or so. There was a mess of seeds, string and bits of pumpkin strewn about when he was done, but Rincewind was delighted. “I shall call it: “A Tribute to Reg Shoe!”